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Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2010 Blog - 11London Shows - Tuesday 27 July 2010I have friend who recently performed in a play at the Rich Mix theatre in east London. On his first day in the theatre, he bounded up the steps of the venue and marched up to the front desk. The young woman sitting at a computer behind the desk looked up at him. My friend asked her where he should go to meet the rest of the cast and crew of the play. She gave him a blank look. He repeated the question. She still had no idea what he was talking about. "It's a play," he added helpfully. Still nothing. Then my friend had a brainwave. He picked up the Rich Mix brochure available to take for free from that same desk, found the page advertising the play he was in, and passed the open booklet to her. She looked at it for a moment. "I'm sorry, no," she said finally, passing the booklet back to him. With that, she turned her attention back to the computer. Allow me to stress here that there is only one theatre in this building and that my friend's production was a rather high-profile world premiere of a new play by a well-known playwright. You understand the level of incompetence we're dealing with here. The brainlessness the front of house employee displayed is not plain stupidity. This is dumbness at an Olympic level. You aren't born this moronic, nobody is. You have to work hard to become this daft. Having had a similar experience with the front of house staff during my visit to Rick Mix during the Othello tour I was keen to see if the staff would continue to uphold their tradition of utter vacuousness (look up the Othello Tour Blog entry imaginatively titled London on my website to find out more). I had planned to ask them several demanding questions about the location of the toilets and a devious inquiry as to the duration of the show to the nearest hour. To my surprise the staff on this occasion were charming, delightful, helpful and informative. It was quite possibly the only time in history that a customer was disappointed at having experienced excellent customer service. Our London shows were good fun. We opened on a Wednesday and ran till Sunday. All the performances were sold out and the show fit the theatre space perfectly. It wasn't a large theatre and therefore certain subtleties could emerge in our performances. We still chopped and changed things around. Lotte is quite the slasher. Beneath that calm, friendly smile lurks a cold, unsentimental script hacker. I mean that as a total compliment by the way. All the changes she's made to the script and the play have been based on good reasoning and always serve to enhance the story or character journey. Sometimes the changes are pretty large and sound rather weird when she first proposes them, but I've learned to trust her and go with it. I've yet to be proved wrong on that. It's also evident from the audiences' reaction that things are working. I've never been in a production that has affected so many people on so many different levels. Watching the audience after the play, they don't simply exit like normal audiences do. They linger and seem to want to hang around to talk about it. Some do. They pull you aside to discuss issues raised in the play. It's astounding how much people are drawn to it. I suppose that's the point in a way. We had a post-show discussion on one of the nights for which most of the audience stayed. The talk went on for an hour with the discussion flowing easily. It was the complete opposite to the Latitude discussion. People want to do something about the issues raised in the play. For example, on our last night in London someone delivered a large tray of cupcakes with a note apologising for not being able to help any more than that! Personally, I loved our Rich Mix run. Being at home was obviously a plus. My aunt and cousins came to see the show on the first night. One of my cousins, who lives in Vietnam, is getting married in a week and it was nice to see her there. Also, some friends popped by to watch the play on another night. We went for a drink in Brick Lane afterwards. Speaking of Brick Lane, I made a great discovery there this week: Bagels. I'd heard that there was a great bagel shop in Brick Lane. I'd first heard about it when I was writing about 101 things to do in London for a website and had kept hearing about it afterwards but had never visited it. It was one of those places that everyone seems to know about, but nobody seems to know exactly where it is. All I knew was that it serves fresh bagels, it is open 24/7 and that it's cheap. I'm happy to report here that that information is right on all counts. I bought a bagel a day (two on the Friday when I was feeling particularly roguish) and I was a very happy man. I needed some joy before Edinburgh. You'll see why soon enough. |
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